If the 18th Century was the age of reason, the 19th
a time when industry and business were center stage, and the 20th an epoch of
science and technology, then the 21st Century will be the Age of Learning, a
time when

more people everywhere will need and seek to learn,

when learning will be a lifelong endeavor,

when learning can and will take place from virtually every context of
daily lifeat work, at home, even at school.

Furthermore, learning and the capacity to learn will become the
important differentiators of successful individuals, communities, and societies.

This new epoch will be a time when learning becomes what farming was to
an agrarian age. In an agricultural society, you farm or you do not eat; you farm all of
your life; and nearly everythingeconomics, politics, cultureis organized
around farming.

In the Age of Learning, you either learn or you do not work; you learn
throughout your life; and the economy and society are increasingly organized around
learning. The intrinsic value of being a learned person will be paralleled by significant
economic and practical value. Colleges and universities could be at the center of this new
age, being both a source of new knowledge and a principle distributor of that knowledge.
Enrollments will nearly double over the next 15-17 years and the demand for what we offer
could and, for some institutions, will be, global in scope. A new age of learning could
well be near to hand.

What will be the characteristics of this new Age of Learning?

First and perhaps most obvious, learning will be more and more digitized.
Whether we think of learning as text, voice, or images, more and more of it will be
represented in digital form and with increasing richness and complexity. While video
streaming, for example, is at present difficult over the Internet, the economic
imperatives and opportunities associated with improving bandwidth are such that we will
soon see the problem of limited bandwidth resolved, if not in full, at least in part.

Second, learning will be more and more networked and part of a
"connected society." A student sitting in a conventional classroom on this
campus or at the end of a wireless mouse anywhere in the world will be linked with
persons, organizations, and resources everywhere in the world. In terms of access to and
use of information and data, a student will have at her or his fingertips more than could
ever repose in the memory of even the brightest faculty member or librarian. Moreover,
tools to search out and acquire recondite information from this vast warehouse of
information are being refined so that even a novice can explore questions and problems for
which data and information are at least part of the answers and solutions.

Third, the globalization of learning and the long-standing interest
here and elsewhere in measuring learning against national and international standards will
lead, in my estimate, to learning increasingly being standardized. This
standardization will not apply so much to the content of learning as it does to the
learning outcomes associated with learning. Learning content will become richer and more
diverse in the future.

Standardization of learning refers more to the growing consensus that
students (and others) should understand and be able to assess what a person should know
and be able to do as a result of a planned learning experience.

I believe that what we are seeing at the K-12 level will makes its way
to postsecondary education and the focus on learning outcomes will further a trend toward
standardization of learning.

Fourth, as learning is standardized (at least with respect to outcomes)
and is rendered in digital form, I anticipate that some learning will be commoditized.
Consider the software program TurboTax, a perfect example of how professional
expertise, in this case, tax knowledge and preparation skill, is turned into what one wag
has called "congealed information" as a digital download from the Internet or in
CD form and becomes, in effect, a commodity.

Commodities are subject to the forces of supply and demand. As more
learning becomes more standardized and more of a commodity and is available in digital
form, supply can grow fairly quickly at very little cost: 50,500 or 5,000 more digital
versions of TurboTax cost very little to produce or distribute, in the case of
downloading from the Internet. Supply, then, might be able to grow to meet the exploding
demand for learning and costs could remain stable or even come down.

Fifth, standardization and commoditization can also lead to learning
being atomized, that is, organized into smaller and smaller units based, for
example, on required time-on-task. These units can then be bundled and rebundled to meet a
variety of needs, including learning style preferences.

Sixth, all of these changes will make it possible for providers to customize
and personalize learning. As large-scale purchasers of learning enter the
marketplace in greater numbers than is even now the case (and the current demand for
training and education is already huge), they will want learning to be customized to meet
organizational goals and objectives and will expect and receive volume discounts. Such is
already the case, but you can anticipate much, much more of this type of customization of
learning in the years to come.

Perhaps more exciting is the personalizing of learning, or what someone
has dubbed "mylearning dot edu or dot com" to signify the extent to which
advances in technology and more than fifty years of solid scientific research on how
people learn and how they like to learn are converging and making it possible for an
individual to have information and learning designed and delivered in ways that are most
comfortable and effective to him or her and their particular learning style. This takes on
enormous importance in any case by getting us out of the business of assuming that one
style fits all, but is all the more valuable given the diversity of persons who will be
seeking to learn in the decades ahead.

Learning content will not be standardized as much as might be expected
and some in higher education fear. We are already seeing that the Internet creates the
capacity to engage in what appears to be an oxymoron known as "mass
customization" in that intelligent servers accumulate and systematize information
about persons preferences and, on the basis of similarities and differences among
preferences, make it possible to tailor information and services according to the
groupings that emerge. In addition, artificial intelligence applications are able to
"learn" from and adapt to transactions over time. What this means to me is that
we will need a diversity of content to respond to the diversity of learners and learning
styles and not have "a" or "the" single source of wisdom for the Civil
War or the laws of thermodynamics or whatever.

And the richness of content assumes still more importance if you are
prepared (as I am) to believe that learning will be "multimediated"
the seventh change I see taking place already. Free e-mail is available now if you have a
computer and connectivity and companies such as Netzero provided users with free and
unlimited Internet access and garnered 1.7 million takers willing to put up with banner
advertising, lousy connections, and no support service.

Limited bandwidth bedevils everyone at present, but the economic stakes
that hinge on a solution to this are simply so great that the marketplace will move
quickly, I believe, to solve the problem, so that, collectively and fairly soon, we will
see the issues of access and the digital divide as well as bandwidth resolved in part or
in whole and more persons will be able to partake of learning replete with video, audio,
animation, and other formats.

Eighth, all of this "-izing" comes to bear with the
recognition that learning will be increasingly activated, by which I mean that
persons will learn in order to do something, to act on the learning, and to do so in a
very immediate, real-time sense. From now on, persons who are confronted with tasks or
problems will seek to acquire "just in time" learning that enables them to
complete tasks or to solve problems and the technology to make that possible is here and
the access is increasingly available.

If you have visited sites such as Hungry
Minds, you can get a sense of what lies ahead in providing learning that addresses
immediate, near-, mid- and long-term needs. For example, one of the providers available
via Hungry Minds is Clear
Station, which bills itself as "the intelligent investment community" and
offers courses of immediate practical application such as "reading price action
graphs" so that you can make a specific investment decision. ISong lets you learn to play songs on the guitar, and when
I was writing this just at Christmas, afforded me the opportunity to play
"Greensleeves."

Ninth and finally (though I have by no means exhausted my list of
"-izings" and "-atings"), learning will be democratized by
which I mean that learning may be more accessible to more people everywhere and price may
not be as much of a barrier as is the case at present. The costs of providing digital
learning to an additional X-number persons is not as significant if those persons have
access to such learning.

But the democratizing of learning I see emerging also relates to
providers increased accountability for the effectiveness of the learning they
deliver. If access to technology and technology-based learning improves and is expanded,
more people will be able to avail themselves of learning. If, as I suggest, learning is
commoditized and rendered more standard, especially in terms of learning outcomes, then
learners will be able to compare learning experiences more directly than is now the case
and judge how well (or how poorly) some experiences meet their personal and professional
needs versus other experiences and other providers.

We can already see the emergence of both "popular" and
"expert" review and rating systems that purport to provide unbiased assessments
of products and services. ePinions.com solicits and
makes reviews available to others who then rate the reviewers and the reviews. Please note
that while ePinions.com does not presently review schools or colleges, their site as of
late December says that such reviews are on the way.

Democratization also means that students will be able and increasingly
capable of acquiring learning from a multiplicity of sources simultaneously. Indeed, it
may be that by mid-century, students enrolled at and attending a single postsecondary
institution is the exception, not the norm. Moreover, people may not be looking to either
public or private colleges and universities, as we know them, as the principal providers
of learning.

Now it will not have escaped notice that few or none of these changes I
have suggested may occur are simple or minor modifications to conventional learning or to
the ways that things are done on most college campuses. I know that many persons will be
challenged and even angered by some of these possible changes and what they mean for
dearly-held ideas about learning, about higher education. And to the extent that that
anger manifests itself in resistance, some and perhaps many of these changes may not come
exactly as I have suggested and may not come as soon as might otherwise be the case. But I
think Greg Farrington, president of Lehigh University, was probably right when he stated
in his inaugural address in 1998 that "higher education cannot escape history"
and some if not all of these types of changes are near to hand in some fashion or another.

But even if there is reason to be concerned, outraged or fearful of the
changes that could be on the near-term horizon, these changes also portend extraordinary
opportunity and may offer some real hope. If the costs of acquiring access to learning are
reduced or at least do not continue recent years paths of sharp increases, then more
people will be able to learn. If technology can be applied in such a way as to accommodate
better the diversity of ways by which persons seek to learn, then perhaps more people will
indeed by successful learners. If technology-based or technology-enhanced learning shrugs
off the constraints of time, distance, and content and teachers and students alike are
able to embrace the contributions of thinkers and artists, scientists and practitioners
from all over the globe, then learning will be richer.

I think the article should definitely be published as it raises some important issues
for schools. I offer the following recommendations for the editing process:

Saying that the 21st century will be the "Age of Learning" didn't really have
any punch for me. My immediate reaction was, you don't think the others were ages of
learning? However, if the reader skips the first sentence and moves into the content of
the article, it all makes sense. The question is, how can you better define the kind of
learning you are talking about. You're talking about vast quantities of knowledge being
available; continual change. Maybe the "Age of Knowledge Explosion"? or the
"Age of Dynamic Knowledge"? (I use a quote in some of my keynotes . . .
"The dynamics of knowledge have become the most important competitive resource of the
firm." - Prof. Ikujiro Nonaka, UC Berkeley)

In the sixth paragraph, that begins "Second, the learning..." instead of using
"a student ... her or his", how about "students ... their". It just
seems to read more smoothly.

In the next paragraph, you don't need to say "in my estimation" -- that's
inherent in the voice of the article.

I commend you for writing in hyperlinking narrative, that is, including enhancing links
in your text.

Very nice introduction of nine characteristics of this new Age of
whateveryouaregoingtocallit. Gives the reader a lot to ponder.

Critic G

To begin with a small point, it is not learning which is digitized, but learning
resources. This may be a small point but perhaps it is representative of the rather
sloppy and unsupported statements, yet very confident, which litter this article.

I am concerned that there are no references to the quite extensive 'futurology'
literature on this theme, a literature which also poses problems for what might be called
'the naive scenario' which this article represents.

I will just raise some of these problems:

Bandwidth, there is no evidence that this is near solution over the Internet, given the
expansion in users, and the high bandwidth needed to get good quality full screen/full
motion video. No one has yet explained how use will not expand to consume capacity as it
does with multilane highways, producing blockages. Even worse, the very globalness of the
Internet will mean there are few hours when use will drop, as it does with local roads.
Serious providers will buy dedicated bandwidth probably using satellite point-multipoint,
which hardly suggests an open democracy in delivery and access.

The paper makes no discrimination between education and training, and thus between
surface and deep learning. Nor is learning styles a generally accepted concept in two ways
- there are those who think it would be wrong to feed a particular style as opposed to
seeking to diversify learning styles of individuals, and there are those who think they
are a myth, arguing that learning strategies are the more rich and real concept,
with the notion of individuals choosing strategies to meet particular learning situations.

This kind of izing and ating is hardly new, which may not be a problem, there is always
room for more in futurology! but there is no reference to previously articulated
frameworks like the four Ds, disintermediation (removal of barriers), disaggregation
(small chunks of learning), differentiation (an important consumer society concept of
course, implying wide customisation, and probably very undemocratic hierarchies!),
diffusion (global access, learning competence).

Ignores the extra-educational roles of educational institutions, particularly
social-psychological development, and this relates strongly to the age of learners and the
degree of instrumentality in their learning, which increases with age, and thus means that
most distance learners are older than 24, and mainly over 30, and know where their careers
are going.

The fact that ODL is in a way being replaced by the concept of distributed learning.
That is, total distance education will be a smallish part of the market compared with
mixed mode, for both educational and social reasons, cf the most successful commercial
university is Phoenix which uses very little distance but is very effective in
distributing access to f-t-f learning, at a cost currently less than most so-called
cyber-universities and open universities.

Societies growing in wealth will always want yet more conspicuous forms of expenditure
(e.g., attendance at a campus university) and ways of differentiating. They will want this
(personal and 'visible') differentiation in outcomes as well as process.

This article just rehashes old stuff and adds little that is new. More recent
literature looks at the diversity of delivery and access options in this new century, and
how these might interrelate - problems of accreditation, credit accumulation, portability
of qualifications, employability, wealth creation/research etc. If this piece had referred
to the literature and perhaps helped readers understand the possibilities and
counterbalancing problems in a deeper way, it would be publishable. As it stands, no. We
are past the time when this topic and polemic (and it is not that good a polemic) was
thought challenging.